About one month before an improvised explosive device ended his life, Army Staff Sgt. Clayton P. Bowen offered his fellow soldiers at a remote Afghanistan outpost a parcel that made their jaws drop.

Addressed to him, the package contained a collection of heavy-duty construction tools the soldiers later would use to improve living conditions at the crude desert outpost, where plywood huts serve as sleeping quarters.

"I've got connections," Bowen, 29, explained.

Earlier, the 12-year Army veteran had asked his stepfather and mother, who publish a construction industry newspaper, to print an ad asking for donations. The tools had poured in, according to Buddy and Reesa Doebbler, both 60.

"He wanted to see if there was anything he could bring into the outpost to make their lives a little more normal," Reesa Doebbler, his mother, said Friday from the family's North Bexar County home.

This act of generosity was one of the last in a history of such displays, relatives said.

Tuesday morning, Bowen was riding in a Humvee with four other soldiers to provide security for Afghanistan's presidential election when it hit the IED. He and another soldier, Pfc. Morris L. Walker of Chapel Hill, N.C., were killed.

The other three soldiers suffered minor injuries, Reesa Doebbler said.

"They were trying to keep the peace," she said.

On Friday, his parents recalled with pride and sadness the determined rise and sudden death of their son, who joined the Army when he was 17 and served as a drill sergeant and a shooting instructor before he was deployed to Afghanistan in February.

"It seemed like the tougher (the job) was, the harder he went after it and the better he got," Buddy Doebbler said.

Bowen also sang for three years in the 82nd Airborne All-American Chorus, a celebrated a cappella group that brought him into the orbit of film and music stars, including Denzel Washington and Faith Hill.

Bowen sang bass and intoned chants that introduced and dismissed his fellow performers, appearing at venues around the world. That included the Arneson River Theater during Fiesta in his hometown.

"He had to be in every song, because he was the only bass," his mother said.

About three months before his death, Bowen employed his creativity in another way. Living hard at the desert outpost in Paktika province, he produced a video that he later sent home as a DVD.

It opens with Bowen, sturdily built with a shaved head and a large tribal tattoo on his right arm, addressing the camera.

"This video is to give you insight into what we've been doing out here and how we've been living," he said.

Photos follow of daily life at the outpost, showing a mortar pit, crude wooden latrines and various high-powered weapons. The words "Ready to Kick Butt!" flash over a photograph of soldiers testing rifles.

The soldiers in Bowen's unit - the 1st Battalion, 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, 4th Airborne Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division - are shown in individual shots with each soldier's nickname. Bowen, who commanded the unit, was known as "The Man," arguably a more desirable handle than some of the others, including "Shakes" and "Estrogen."

But all bravado is defused at the video's conclusion, in which Bowen's sense of humor and compassion emerge.

"What we think about every day," he wrote to introduce a photo of beer in a refrigerator - a joke soon followed by the words, "We think about our family and friends" flashing onscreen, then a string of photographs of Bowen, a graduate of Churchill High School, relaxing in San Antonio with loved ones.

Bowen was set to leave the desert and return home on leave in September. He would have been home for his 30th birthday; his mother and stepfather were planning a big party for him at the house.

Instead, his body will arrive Monday. Visitation will be held Thursday from 5 to 8 p.m. at Porter Loring Mortuaries at 2102 N. Loop 1604 East. The funeral is scheduled for 11 a.m. Friday at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery.

"He was a great kid," Buddy Doebbler said. "He really grew up into a hell of a man, and we were really proud of him."